Do you notice how fast tech is changing?

Do you notice how fast tech is changing?

I'm on an airplane right now. I've been flying pretty regularly since I was 5 years old (parents got divorced and back then they could live in different states).

It's the flight experience where you can really see how much tech has changed. More to the point, as Kurzweil has pointed out, tech is changing exponentially and it's gotten to the point where it's really hard to miss.

On the way to the airport

I was able to check in to my seat via the Delta app that put a notification on my screen while in my Tesla on auto-pilot. Just a couple of clicks and I was good to go.

At the airport

I have TSA PRE and the new clear program which is supposedly (but not really) faster than TSA Pre. I was through security faster than before 9/11. The only hic-up, was that the monorail was down to the gate which meant hoofing half a mile. Reminded me that most rail advocates probably don't use much rail. Rail was a great tech in the 19th century...

I sit down near the terminal and every chair has its own little iPad type device for ordering food and drink. Almost no one uses them now, they're already outdated because their iPhone or Android device "has an app" that's easier.

Under the covers, thanks to computer aided data analysis, what are in airports now are much nicer and useful. They know what works in airports (coffee ships, mid to high end restaurants, shoulder massage) and what doesn't (fast food, general goods). And tech has largely eliminated book stores (sigh). The result is that the airports I visit are generally quite pleasant.

Moreover, the better experience means lower stress. If Brad from 1989 were to time travel to 2019, the first thing I'd notice is how much happier people are. The general smoothness of how air transportation works now (relatively speaking) means a lot less stressed people. The only really archaic thing left are the &#$%@ drivers licenses or other physical ID we still have to mess with and of course the normal TSA experience (mainly the damn shoe thing). But the end result is that people tend to be pretty relaxed (relatively).

On the plane

Many of the chairs have displays on the back. Already outdated. They're the display of last resort because everyone has a handheld or some kind. Which reminds me, I can't find my Kindle.

Planes typically have WiFi, it's not free but eliminates much of the boredom of long flights. I use to pour through PC Gamer, PC Magazine, PC World, Macworld, etc. from start to end on these flights. And even that was a big step up from the early 80s and 70s where I'd lug Infoworld with me in the late 80s. I still miss reading Nick Petreley's articles.

But it's not just that it's improved, it's that the rate of improvement is accelerating.

What are some of the things you've noticed changing that seems to be changing even more rapidly now?

There WILL be completely autonomous cars, but only when two more things come together as well, IMO: car to car communication *and* road side sensors communicating with cars. So the latter infrastructure will need to be slowly added on top of current roads, just like the current road infrastructure was slowly built over time.

Everywhere else you will need to drive the car manually or only with driver-assist instead of full autonomy. Something like that anyway.

You will probably also need some sort of 'traffic director' centers too (a bit like modern air traffic controllers) to overview overall traffic and deal with situations that require human intervention (e.g.; temporarily block a path to autonomous cars due to scheduled construction, unexpected events, etc...)

You will probably also need some sort of 'traffic director' centers too (a bit like modern air traffic controllers)

And what happens when traffic control centres also become automated.... as is the case with everything in the technological era? The other problem with ground traffic control is that there are millions more vehicles on the road than there are planes in the sky.... thus creating huge potential for chaos and carnage on the roads.

Simply put, autonomous vehicles are NOT a good idea. Just because they can make them doesn't mean they should.

I understand how AI actually works as well, which is another reason that I am against driverless cars.

More importantly, there is currently nowhere on internet where free speech exists. The internet is the primary place where speech occurs in the 21st century, the proverbial soapbox of the 21st century. The "1st amendment only guarantees government shall pass no law" excuse doesn't work, because it is the primary place where speech takes place today. It is the modern day "public forum". The major forums like Facebook and Twitter should be regulated as public utilities and not able to control speech however they choose. You are just asking too live in a hellish nightmare right now allowing whoever controls those companies to control public thought, which they currently do.

If the internet is going to be a place where free speech is not allowed anywhere on it, then it should be immediately destroyed. It was obviously a mistake, and too dangerous of an experiment to keep allowing it to live.

If the internet is going to be a place where free speech is not allowed anywhere on it, then it should be immediately destroyed. It was obviously a mistake, and too dangerous of an experiment to keep allowing it to live.

The genie is already out of the bottle and the internet has become too big to reign back in since governments and corporations adopted it to do business.

If the internet is going to be a place where free speech is not allowed anywhere on it, then it should be immediately destroyed. It was obviously a mistake, and too dangerous of an experiment to keep allowing it to live.

The genie is already out of the bottle and the internet has become too big to reign back in since governments and corporations adopted it to do business.

Currently a few unelected people control who can speak and what they are allowed to say. The structure that exists makes it easy for a single controlling entity, such as the CIA and Operation Mockingbird, to almost completely control public "perception" (what the public believes). It's not just not allowing the "little people" in the public to speak, it is even more "controlling the narrative" and literally brainwashing the people into believing whatever they want you to believe. This is happening, and has been happening in full swing since about 2004 and the "Anti-War Movement"... as if anyone is "pro-war".

The internet is being used to control public opinion. Between the internet and media you are all being literally brainwashed to believe that up is down and down is up, black is white and white is black. In 20 years your children will be literal slaves and America will no longer exist. This is EXACTLY how communism/fascism come to power, this is EXACTLY it. That process, EXACTLY. The internet is the most powerful tool those people have ever had. The true definition of fascism is "people who want to control other people" and the internet is the most powerful tool for their ways, the ways of Vladimir Lenin, that has ever been created.

If things go as they currently are, 20-30 years from now the world is going to make the German Reich look like paradise! The internet is a public utility and it should be regulated by the US Constitution, not the whims of those who "own" the public channels of communication. If that is not going to be the case, then the people should rise up and destroy every internet server on Earth until there is no internet left.

Kavik_Kang .... you do realize I am one of those you despise, with the task of maintaining Stardock's interactions [Forums] and one of the 'rules' is where on our forums we allow Political opinion/expression, something you are approaching here [and one of the wrong places]...

Kavik_Kang .... you do realize I am one of those you despise, with the task of maintaining Stardock's interactions [Forums] and one of the 'rules' is where on our forums we allow Political opinion/expression, something you are approaching here [and one of the wrong places]...

I don't "despise" you. Notice that I keep saying that "primary forums of speech" should be declare public utilities. Private companies, like Stardock, should have every right to limit the discussion to their product. To have a website that is about their products and services and not, for example, politics. There is nothing wrong with what you are doing here, on a private company's website to keep the discussion about this company's products and services.

There is nothing wrong with GameDev.Net moderating speech, although they might consider the seriousness of that task and how quick they are to silence educational speech.

The point is that there is NOWHERE on the internet where there are not unelected, untrained people who decide who can speak and what they can say at their whim. "Chicken Farmers". People with no qualifications to be doing this dangerously important job. People who don't even believe that "The Game" exists, and are therefore easily manipulated.

The American solution, as was done with the telephone companies, is to declare places like Facebook and Twitter to be "primary forums of communication" and "public utilities". If there is no place where speech is not controlled, there are people, like me, who know how to use that to literally brainwash the masses.

If Vladimir Lenin were alive today he would already be ruling the world through the internet...

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

“Democracy is indispensable to socialism.”

“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

“It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.”

“Sometimes history needs a push.”

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

I am not making this political, just trying to make the point and couldn't resist adding the key, the ultimate core of the issue...

"To honor ones own freedom is, in essence, to honor the freedom of all others." - Dwight Eisenhower

Mere acceptance of those who are not like you... those with different beliefs, those with different lifestyles, those who "aren't like us"... is not enough. The key answer is to take it too the next level and actually "honor the freedom" of those who are not like you.

If you believe that, then you would never wish to silence the speech of others, hold someone's sexuality against them, or their race... you name it. Those words are the key to what everyone, on both sides of the political isle, really and truly want.

I would have made a living nightmare of an "Angel Messiah"... wouldn't I?

Tech is only changing faster because people are trying to make themselves become more useless. They want tech to do everything for them. Downright ridiculous and idiotic, but then again, so is 80% of the human race.

Do you notice how fast tech is changing?

Yeah, actually. A Texan holidaying in Australia joined a train journey I was on and he spotted the tallest building in the Brisbane CBD. "I wonder how much that cost to build and how long it took them?"

I answered with: "Not too saure how much it cost exactly, but I reakon at least a billion and a half. As I recalll, it took about 18 months to complete."

The Texan responded with: "Well back in the US that would have only cost a quarter of that and we would have completed it in around six months."

A bit further along he noticed the new Quensland Police Headquarters. "Well hot diggetty, that's a magnificent building. I wonder how long it took to build and how much it cost?"

"As far as I know, it took about 2 years to complete at around 2 billion."

"Well back in Houston Texas we have a police headquarters more impressive than that and it only took 3 months to build at only a fraction of that cost?"

A bit further along he noticed a mobile phone communications tower, the biggest in the Southern Hemispere. "Wow, now that is impressive, I wonder how much that cost to build?"

By now I'm getting tired of the 'we can do it cheaper and faster in the US', so answered with, "Probably around a million.

"Wow, that's incredible for the price:" he responded; " And how long did it take to build?"

Only thing a lot of this tech is doing is making millions of LAZY people.

Tech hasn't made me lazy. I was lazy already.

Seriously, I used to love hard, physical work..... being a removalist; roadwork building new roads, etc; linework on the railways replacing old sleepers, etc.... back when it was all manual labour. These days much of it is automated and done by machinery. I tried factory and officework but never really liked it, opting to go back to the manual work I preferred.

One factory job I applied for and glad I didn't get was picking fly shit out of pepper.

I'm past the normal retirement age now, but was actually retired for about ten years before that due to health and mobility issues, which is why I'm thankful for a lot of tech that assists with my daily life.... especially the computer